


Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor

by call_lightning



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Thieves, Byleth is an archivist but not an Archivist sorry TMA fans, Conspiracy, Gross misuse of my museum studies degree probably, Gun Violence, Hacking, Heists, I don't think anyone's ever used that tag before lmao, I guess sort of a Leverage AU as well?, Intrigue, Literally every heist movie trope I can throw into this thing, Male My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan, Minor Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Minor Marianne von Edmund/Hilda Valentine Goneril, Multi, Museums, Mystery, National Treasure au, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Those Who Slither in the Dark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:01:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29384541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/call_lightning/pseuds/call_lightning
Summary: Claude von Riegan, historian, cryptologist, conman, and occasional master thief, is searching for a collection of ancient weapons that were hidden away hundreds of years ago during the Fódlan Unification War. He is following a series of clues passed down through generations pointing towards a coded, unseen map, placed on one of the few remaining legendary Heroes' Relics in the possession of the National Archives.The map points to the secret location of these historic treasures, but Claude and his ragtag band of associates are not alone in their quest. They’re going to have to take drastic measures to protect the Relic, follow the clues, and unravel a conspiracy as old as the country itself– and Claude’s going to do this the best way he knows how.He’s going to steal it. He’s going to steal the Sword of the Creator.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor

**Author's Note:**

> A very young Khalid hears a very old story. A family legend is revealed. A lifelong search begins.

The story begins, like all the best ones do, on a stormy night, in the darkened attic of an ancient manor. 

Khalid von Riegan pads with near-silence across the floorboards, his small feet leaving tracks behind him in the accumulated dust. He only holds a small flashlight to guide him, its beam dulled from fading batteries, illuminating rows of shelves, cobwebbed trunks, and decades of furniture covered in white sheets. There is a small round window peeking above the rafters of the ceiling which occasionally lights up with the crack of lightning, throwing the attic into contrasting shadows and shades of grey. 

He steps gingerly over an old board sticking partially up to avoid any squeaks, and ducks low to avoid the outstretched arm of a wrought-iron coat rack. Under his breath, he counts the rows of bookshelves carefully, moving further into the crowded spaces until he reaches the second to the last one. With care, he climbs on top of a nearby crate, reaching to the top of the shelf to grasp a particular book, its leather cover embossed with gold that shines through even the layer of dust, glinting in the dim glow of his flashlight. Even on top of the crate, Khalid strains to reach the top shelf. At eight years old, he has not yet hit his growth spurt, something his mother has heard him endlessly complain about. 

“You’re not supposed to be up here.”

Khalid jumps at the sound, nearly falling off the crate entirely. He just manages to hang onto the weak wood of a shelf with a small hand, keeping him upright. He turns around, clenching the book tight to his chest protectively. 

“Grandfather! I...I can explain-”

“No need for that, boy.” His grandfather’s expression is stern, but not entirely angry. He waits behind Khalid, leaning slightly on a gold-tipped mahogany cane, looking polished as ever in a three-piece suit, even if his face is lined and sinking from the unfortunate combination of illness and age. “I see you’ve found the old Riegan journal.”

Khalid climbs down off of the crate, making sure to move the book gently. Even at eight, he knows how to handle aged documents, though he hadn’t been able to swipe any archivist’s gloves from his mother’s supplies. 

“Maman said that there was a secret in it, and I wanted to see.”

His grandfather grips his cane with both hands, looking thoughtful. 

“Well then,” he says, “I suppose that I was your age when I first heard about it. If you’re so interested, I’ll pass it on to you as well.”

Khalid’s face lights up. He never passes up the chance to learn something new. “Pass on what, Grandfather?”

“Khalid,” his grandfather whispers, his eyes glinting. “Would you like to hear a story? A true story, about the history of Fódlan and our family.” 

Khalid nods enthusiastically. “What’s the story about?”

His grandfather leans in close to him, placing one hand on the book in Khalid’s hands. A clap of thunder sounds, shaking the bones of the old house around them like a tiny earthquake. 

“Have you ever heard of the Heroes’ Relics?”

–

“Long, long ago, on a night much like tonight,” his grandfather begins, “an old man boarded a carriage and ordered the coachman to take him to the royal palace in Fhirdiad. He was dying, you see, and he needed to speak to the king of Fódlan.” He gives a dramatic pause, lightning from the attic window flashing across his serious expression. “That man was my great-great-great-great grandfather, and he was the last surviving member of the generals who had won the Unification War.”

_A carriage clatters along the cobblestones of the main streets of Fhirdiad, skipping and heaving over dips in the road as it barrels towards the walls of the castle, which tower above the city stretching into the dark clouds of a thunderstorm. The carriage driver snaps the reins, urging his panting horses to move even faster, pushing them to their limit as cold rain and sleet pelt them from all angles._

_The rain hammers against the carriage roof and windows, making it shake and rattle from every side. Inside, an old, wizened man bearing the golden cape marked with the Crest of House Riegan wraps his arthritic fingers tighter around the hand of a small, green-eyed boy next to him. The boy is trying desperately not to reveal any of his terror on his face as he clutches his great-grandfather’s hand. Both of them hold on, neither of them saying a word, almost holding their breaths until the carriage finally skids up to the main castle gates. Over the cracks of lightning, they can hear their driver shouting to the guards of their urgent need to speak to the king._

“What did he have to talk to the king about?”

Khalid’s grandfather takes the journal from him, and opens it to a page marked with a silk ribbon. Sketched on the parchment in fading ink are depictions of oddly-shaped swords, axes, bows, and a shield, unlike any Khalid has seen before in his life. 

“ _Weapons_ ,” his grandfather says. “He needed to tell the king about the weapons, the ones more powerful than any others in the world.”

_As the driver continues to shout to the castle guards, the old man pulls a thick leather-bound journal emblazoned with a crescent moon and a travel quill from his bag. The boy reaches for the book, offering to hold the heavy weight of it instead, but the man shakes his head, and continues to hold it tight. The driver has finished his argument with the guards, and is allowed past, continuing their breakneck speed forward to the main castle doors. They loom, foreboding and massive, over the carriage as it gets closer and closer._

“Before Fódlan was a unified country, there was a massive war, one that eclipsed all wars before and after it. Three countries fought each other to a bloody stalemate, but then paused to come together and form an alliance to fight against a dark force that threatened to destroy the entirety of civilization itself.”

Khalid’s eyes go very wide. “What force?”

His grandfather looks as grim as he’s ever seen him. “They have had many names over the years, but one was coined by the last Adrestian Empress’s advisor that stuck around.” 

He turns a page in the journal to reveal sketches of strange sigils, a mask, and some type of large automated creature, with a long strip torn from the bottom of the left page. A phrase is written in bold script across the top of that page, underlined three times. Khalid reads it out loud.

_“Those Who Slither in the Dark.”_

_The carriage driver leaps out of his seat, rushing to knock on the castle doors. Thick sheets of rain soak him to the bone almost instantly, but he continues anyway. Inside the carriage, the old man begins to cough. His body shakes with the effort, and he holds a handkerchief with trembling hands to his lips. It comes away bloody. The boy holds onto his great-grandfather’s arm, watching helplessly, unable to do anything but try to hold him upright and steady his back as the old man hacks and coughs in long intervals._

_The man takes his quill, writes out a phrase on the top of a page detailing all of what he had recorded of the dark organization he had fought against so long ago. The boy reads it over his shoulder. His great-grandfather, between coughs, tells him to stay vigilant, that the organization was beaten back into submission long ago, but that they were rebuilding._

Khalid runs a small finger along a drawing of a mask that looks like a raven’s beak. “They’re still around? The evil force?”

“Those Who Slither in the Dark were said to practice dark magics,” his grandfather intones. “They can make themselves look like anyone, insert themselves anywhere, and bend even the most powerful fighters to their will if given enough time. The generals believed for decades that they had driven them out for good, but then, one by one, their Relics started disappearing.”

Khalid pointed at the page with the sketches of weapons, all next to a small symbol of a Crest and a name. “Are those the Relics? The weird swords and things?”

“That’s right, boy,” his grandfather says. “Many of the generals came from long lines of families that were said to be magically blessed, and these weapons would work only for them. They held immense power, and were one of the reasons the allied countries won the war. After they established peace, however, the weapons were locked away, protected by the families and the families alone. All except two. Those were held by the Church of Seiros instead.” He points at a drawing of two swords, side by side, with strange-looking hilts and segmented blades. Khalid gasps at them, lighting up in recognition. 

“I’ve seen those before in my books! The Sword of the Creator and Thunderbrand! Maman said she’d take me to see them at the museum in Garreg Mach when I’m older!” 

“Your mother has taught you well.” A ghost of a smile passes across his grandfather’s lined face. “Yes, these were wielded by two of the Church’s champions during the war, and were protected with the strongest precautions available. They were the only two whose location remained known by the time my many-times great-grandfather left to speak to the king. The others had slowly been disappearing from the families’ vaults and homes, never to be found again, no matter how hard they looked for them. Our ancestor believed that Those Who Slither in the Dark were responsible.”

“So, what did the king say when he told him that?”

_The castle doors open up, a woman in a maid’s uniform stepping out onto the landing to speak with the carriage driver. She looks apologetic as she explains something to him, clasping her hands in front of her._

“He never got the chance to tell him. The king was out of the city on an unexpected mission. Our ancestor knew that he would not live long enough to see the king return, so he did the only thing he could, the only option he had left.”

Khalid’s grandfather taps an image of a great longbow with dangerous spikes pointing along its curves. “Do you recognize this Crest, Khalid?”

Next to the bow is a crescent moon symbol that Khalid has seen many times, emblazoned on seals and stationary, and on the front of the journal itself. “That’s...the Riegan Crest. That’s _ours_. We had a Relic?”

His grandfather nods. “Its name was Failnaught, and it was the last Relic that Those Who Slither in the Dark hadn’t managed to steal. It had been hidden away, but before it was, our ancestor worked with the remaining families to use the last bits of the magic in their blood to inscribe a clue on it, a clue that they hoped would help find a way to track down the Relics. The clues had to be hidden, many times over, to keep Those Who Slither in the Dark from knowing that people were looking for them. He was trying to reach the king to tell him the bow’s location, in hopes that he would use the resources of the Crown to begin the search."

“But, if he never saw the king, what happened?”

_The old man coughs more blood into his handkerchief as the deeply despairing carriage driver informs them of the king’s absence. He waves the driver away as he tries to help, the driver eventually calling back for a healer within the castle, and motions for the boy to move closer to him._

_With one last movement of his quill, he writes a small sentence on the torn-off piece of parchment, and presses it into his great-grandson’s hands, along with the journal. The boy clutches them both to his chest as the man draws one last shuddering breath, and asks him to promise to never stop looking for the truth._

_The last general of the Unification War dies with the plea on his lips, his hand falling from the boy’s, limp and cold. The boy, tears streaming down his face as heavily as the raindrops on the carriage’s windows, reads the slip of parchment through blurred eyes._

One last page in the journal is turned. A worn piece of parchment with jagged edges smoothes by time appears pressed into the page. Khalid’s grandfather reads the sentence written on it out loud. 

“Failnaught lies with Cethleann.”

Khalid frowns as he gingerly runs the pads of his fingers across the slip of parchment and faded ink. “The Saint? Where is she?”

“No one knows.” Khalid’s mother’s voice cuts in from behind both of them sharply through the ambient noise of rain and thunder, startling Khalid and his grandfather out from the reverie of the story. She’s standing next to the open trapdoor to the attic, arms crossed and looking royally pissed. 

“Saint Cethleann died hundreds of years before the generals,” she says. Her narrowed eyes bore hard holes into Khalid’s grandfather and the book. “Her ashes are with her statue next to the other three Saints in the National Cathedral. There’s no bow recorded as ever being part of her possessions. She never owned or used a single weapon.”

Khalid isn’t about to let the topic go so quickly. “But, did they check-”

“Every place Cethleann was recorded to visit, every location she lived at, have all been searched time and time again,” his mother snaps. “She never had the bow. She never had any descendants, either. It’s gone, just like the rest of them.”

She strides over to Khalid, removing the book from his hands and putting it back in its place on the shelf. “Our family has been looking for Failnaught for centuries, and they’ve never gotten past that first ‘clue.’ It’s all made up. A wild goose chase. And _you_ , Dad,” she glares at his grandfather, “should stop filling Khalid’s head with fanciful tales.” 

“But how do you know that, Maman? Did you look for it too?” 

“For nearly half my life,” his mother spits out. “I wasted valuable time and energy pursuing a fairy tale that your grandfather and his predecessors searched for, with nothing to show for it but our family name being turned into a _joke_ , for everyone to think that we’re lunatics. I had _real_ history to study. I had you to raise. I actually did something with my life, unlike most of the people in this family.” 

“Tiana, there’s no need for-” his grandfather began, but she cut him off. 

“We’re done with this. Khalid, head back to your room immediately.” With that, she spins on a heel and marches back down the stairs, slamming the trapdoor shut behind her. 

Khalid looks at his grandfather, who reaches to take the book back down from the shelf to hold it. “Is that true? Is the story really fake?”

His grandfather shakes his head. “It isn’t fake. Your mother is just one of several people in our family’s history who have been discouraged by the clue, and have given up on the search. But you don’t want to do that, do you, boy?”

Khalid runs his finger across the picture of the bow. His mind feels like it’s going a million miles an hour, burning with curiosity and intrigue. “No,” he finally says, with decisive sureness. “I want to look for it, too.”

“There’s a good lad. Well then, there’s only one thing left to do.” His grandfather closes the journal, putting a liver-spotted hand on the cover, right over their family’s Crest. “Every person who begins their quest for the Relics must make a promise, just like our ancestor did to his great-grandfather all those years ago. Place your hand on top of mine.”

Khalid does so. His small, tan hand stands starkly out on top of his grandfather’s pale, long-fingered larger one. 

“Do you promise to devote yourself towards the search for Failnaught, and to follow the clues towards the Heroes’ Relics?” 

Khalid nods solemnly. “I do.” 

“Do you promise to protect and preserve these secrets away from those who might use them for evil?” 

“I...I do.” 

“And do you promise to pass this on to future generations of the Riegan line, so that our ancestor’s sacrifices may not be in vain?” 

“I do.”

An immense clap of thunder shakes the attic again, punctuating his final words. Khalid feels it reverberate through his bones, feels an intense thrumming in his veins, singing with fire and power. His grandfather removes his hand from the book, and passes it to Khalid. 

“Very good,” he says. “It is done. The journal is yours now, to help guide your search. All the books here in the attic are records of past Riegans’ searches. Read them, and never stop learning. You will need all the skills you can muster if you are to take on this task.” 

Khalid nods again, unable to speak, still feeling a little shell-shocked by the gravity of the stories thrust upon him. His grandfather gives him a rare smile, one he almost never shows Khalid. In between the flashes of lightning, he almost looks, for the first time, like he’s proud of him. 

“Welcome to the Riegan legacy, Khalid,” he says. “Welcome to the hunt.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, hi, hello, and welcome to the best AU idea that I’ll probably ever come up with! Heist movies and stories are one of my absolute favorite genres and I’ve devoured every one I’ve come across: Leverage, Hustle, Six of Crows, the Ocean’s movies, etc., and who could be a better ragtag heist crew than the Golden Deer? National Treasure is also one of my favorite movies in the world (I have a history degree, what can I say, lol), and this fic will be pulling a lot from its structure and plot, so go watch it if you haven’t seen it! It’s silly, exciting, and Nicholas Cage’s best work, in my humble opinion. The title of this fic comes from the last line of the Declaration of Independence, as a tribute. 
> 
> Updates to this should tentatively be every other week, with chapters of my other AU work, Midnight Show, being released on the alternating ones. 
> 
> One last thing, and this is a big one, so please read: 
> 
> It should go without saying that this fic is NOT meant to reference or endorse real-life conspiracy theories about shadowy organizations influencing governments, and is solely based on the TWSitD group and its role in the video game. I know this should seem obvious, but I live in America, where certain conspiracy theories believed by certain people are currently having some very bad real-life consequences, so I just wanted to make myself very clear. This is meant as a purely fictional thriller/heist action film send-up with all the tropes of that genre, and nothing more. If you are reading this fic and for some reason believe in any of those real-life theories (again, I’m talking the shadowy cabals that an organization starting with a certain letter of the alphabet espouses, not like, theories around aliens or Bigfoot), please close this tab and go educate yourself on the incredibly harmful and dangerous effects of those beliefs.
> 
> If my work at any point starts to veer into an area that hits a little too close to home or makes anyone uncomfortable, please let me know and I will correct it immediately. All of my fics are un-beta’d and I unfortunately can’t catch everything sometimes, but I just want to make sure that this is a fun, exciting genre story, and nothing more. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, folks, and I’ll see you soon!


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